Top capacity, fast speed, friendly pricing

The Seagate Backup Plus Desktop is an excellent alternative to its little brother, the Backup Plus portable drive. The new storage device boasts a massive amount of storage space — up to 5TB — and speedy performance.

Other than that, it shares the same Seagate Dashboard backup application as other recent external hard drives from Seagate, as well as a piece of driver software that makes it work with both Mac and Windows right out of the box, without reformatting.

Available in four capacities of 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and 5TB that currently cost just $90 (£54.99), $130 (£77.99), $160 (£112.40), and $220, respectively, the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop is a great deal for anyone with a USB 3.0-enabled computer. It’s an easy recommendation. (This model is not currently available in Australia.)

Straightforward design, flexible platform support

The Backup Plus Desktop comes in a typical look for a desktop external storage device that houses a single internal hard drive: it’s like a brick that’s slightly larger than a standard 3.5-inch internal hard drive. On one side, it has a Micro-USB 3.0 port and a power port. The drive include a standard USB 3.0 cable and a small power adapter. Because 3.5-inch hard drives use a lot more power than can be supplied by a USB port, the drive, as well as all desktop external storage devices, is not bus-powered and requires a separate power adapter to work.

(Note: This is a latest revision of the Backup Plus Desktop with the model number STDTx000100, with x being 2, 3, 4, or 5 to represent the number of TB. There was a prior version of the Backup Plus Desktop that carried model numbers starting with “STCA” and a maximum capacity of 4TB.)

The drive’s chassis is made up plastic but still it feels very solid. On its sides and bottom, there are little ventilation holes to keep the internal drive cool. The internal hard drive is sealed in, and you can’t replace it yourself, which is a normal design for most external hard drives.

Specifications

Out of the box, the Backup Plus Desktop is preformatted in NTFS for Windows. It, however, includes the NTFS driver software for Mac. Once installed, this software enable Macs to read and write to the drive. Without this software, Macs generally can just read NTFS file system.

Note that there’s also Mac version of the Backup Plus Desktop that comes preformatted in HFS+ for Macs, which conversely comes with HFS+ driver software for Windows.

Essentially, regardless of what version you get, you can use the Backup Plus Desktop with either platform without reformatting. But if you want to reformat, you still can, just as with any other computer drive.

Helpful backup software, short warranty

Just as in the case of the recently-reviewed Backup Plus Fast, the new Backup Plus Desktop comes preloaded with the latest version of the Seagate Dashboard backup software. The software has three main backup functions: PC Backup, Mobile Backup, and Social.